Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Collectors may change their behaviour as a result of you being with them, for
example, not staying out as long as usual or avoiding illegal activity. Hence, when-
ever possible, it is important to have supporting information collected in other
ways to ensure that what you think you are seeing is what you actually are seeing.
3.2.4.4 Experimental economics
Experimental economics has a similar structure to experimental ecology. Theory
leads to hypotheses, which can be tested first in controlled conditions and then in
the field (Smith 1994). Much of economics is based on observation—we see a cor-
relation between changes in the quantity of a good on sale and its price and draw
conclusions based on our underlying theory of supply and demand. Experimental
economics, on the other hand, sets out to test theories by creating a situation in
which people can be observed acting out their preferences. It is a specialised branch
of economics, and care is needed in experimental design in order to produce valid
results. In particular you need a firm grasp of the underlying economic theory that
you are setting out to test, or you will produce meaningless results.
There are some examples of this approach being used to study people's
behaviour in situations relevant to natural resource conservation. Cardenas (2004)
carried out an experiment looking at the way in which natural resource users
develop and comply with management rules. In an impressively broad study across
15 countries, Henrich
et al
. (2006) used an experimental economics approach to
look at the psychological basis of punishment in a set of simple games, and showed
that people were prepared to punish behaviour that they disapproved of, even
though it was costly to them personally to carry out the punishment.
Experimental economics often involves games in which individuals are playing
for a small amount of money, or which are conducted in artificial, hypothetical
situations. This is necessary in order to produce clear quantitative outcomes, but
just as in ecology, the artificiality limits the generalisability of the results. However,
this approach does have potential to be useful in conservation, particularly as a
component of a participatory learning process between researchers and the com-
munities under study. For example, Sirén
et al
. (2006) carried out a real-life lot-
tery for prizes such as a cockerel, tinned fish, poultry wire and shotgun cartridges
in an indigenous community in Amazonian Ecuador, aiming to understand the
choices that people make between hunting and other livelihood activities. This
study was not that informative in terms of providing clear answers to a research
question, but it did get the community talking about how income and alterna-
tive livelihood activities interact to determine hunting pressure.
3.2.4.5 Using the literature
There is a huge range of literature types available, at all scales from the local to the
global. Here are some ideas:
●
There are many sources of
official statistics
from governments and interna-
tional organisations, some of which are freely downloadable from the internet
